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Mira LaNasa

Junior James Wagner and seniors Matthew Dietrich, Jennah Slayton and Hailey Concepcion rehearse their serenade audition in hopes of gaining a chance at being a part of the BLAST week festivities. “This year, we are dedicating February 15 to students and are showcasing the wonderful talents our student body has to offer,” Balok says. “As always, we will end our week with a school-wide pepfest to celebrate our students, complete with a student teacher basketball game.”

Be Loving and Sharing Together week has been a tradition for many years. This year, BLAST week will take place the week of Feb. 12-18 and will feature both old and new spirit days and activities.

Every year Student Council hosts BLAST week around the middle of February. Student Council decides which spirit days are put on as well as what activities will take place.

This year BLAST week will feature pajama day, Valentine’s Day colors, patriotic day, throwback Thursday/decades day and tie dye/rainbow day. While pajama day and patriotic day are nothing new to SAHS, they are crowd favorites.

“I think PJ [pajama] day and patriotic day generally attract the largest percentage of participation. I think that is largely attributed to the fact that a lot of people have patriotic clothes (patriotic day is also open to countries other than the Unites States) and pajamas [are] readily available,” Emera Balok, senior and Student Council President said.

When organizing BLAST week every year, Student Council decides activities as well as spirit days, however every year Valentines serenades are organized. The serenades allow for students to send their teachers, friends or significant others a fun song around Valentine’s Day in class.

“The officers of orchestra host auditions where the different groups audition for the serenades. The money goes to the concert orchestra organization. We use it to go towards the tour that we will be taking in March to Pittsburg,” senior Emma Pelletier explained.

Junior James Wagner is hoping to take part in these serenades this year with his group consisting of seniors Matthew Dietrich, Jennah Slayton and Hailey Concepcion. He described the audition process as lengthy but fun.

“Jennah chose the song Lucky by Jason Mraz. It’s a fairly simple, cute song and has a theme of love. For me, personally, it has been a good way to begin to sing music. The song is challenging at times to find my pitch, but with the help of my serenade group, especially Jennah, I have never been overwhelmed. It was, and is, a great choice for the occasion,” Wagner said.

Although it is difficult to estimate the amount of revenue produced by BLAST week in the average year, most of the money that is produced is given to a good cause.

“I couldn’t say the exact numbers for how much money BLAST week generates since each year we try out new events, be that revenue generating events, or ones that require us to spend more,” Balok said. “Generally, the vast majority of the money we make goes towards BLAST grants that Student Council gives out to teachers to help pay for things in their classrooms, such as new materials and fun additions to learning experiences.”

While BLAST week will be a fun and exciting opportunity, Student Council finds it difficult to inform students about upcoming activities.

“The most common obstacles when planning these events are communicating with students and community members to participate. We try to organize well in advance and talk to people in our community who would like to come and speak, but regardless of how early we start we always seem to be figuring out important details until the very last second,” Balok explained.

Despite this, Balok is looking forward to Be Loving and Sharing Together with her peers to celebrate talent and kindness.

“Overall, Student Council does a great job at generating excitement for the week and I am very proud of all the effort I’ve seen being put into making this week as wonderful as it can be,” Balok said.